Claire Waldoff (1884-1957)

(this text can also be heard in the audio clip)

Waldoff was very courageous by the standards of the time, made no secret of her homosexuality even before the First World War and lived with her great love Olga von Roeder. She wrote about Olga: “The darker and more critical the times became, the more we were drawn together. Olly is generally a rare, pure character, a wonderful person”

On stage, she played with social norms and provoked with her appearance. Her hit “Hannelore vom Halleschen Tore” deals with bisexual-lesbian content, and she also addresses female emancipation in other texts and roles.

Her appearances in Berlin’s major variety theaters in the mid-1920s were a highlight of her career. From 1924, she was also engaged for the revue at the Großes Schauspielhaus, the predecessor of the Friedrichstadt-Palast.

Waldoff also performed at “Montmartre im Topp-Keller” and sang her political songs. She described the Top-Keller as the “secretive Eldorado of women”, referring to the Eldorado, the city’s most famous club with travesty shows, where mainly men performed. She and her partner Olga von Roeder were a focal point of lesbian nightlife in Berlin in the 1920s. They also ran a cultural and political salon for lesbians to exchange ideas. They often celebrated wild nights with the Pyramide ladies’ club on Mondays in the Topp-Keller. In her memoirs, she wrote about the evenings: “Entree 30 Pfennig, four musicians with wind instruments played the forbidden club songs. A hall decorated with garlands, populated by painters and models. From the side you could see famous painters; beautiful, elegant women who wanted to get to know the other side of Berlin, the wicked side of Berlin; and little employees in love; and there were jealousies and tears all the time and the couples always had to disappear to settle their marital disputes outside. For so many times during the evening, the famous ‘cognac polonaise’ was played, which was celebrated kneeling on the dance floor with a full glass of cognac in front of you. The unparliamentary lyrics of this polonaise make my pen bristle … In between, the celebrities of the time appeared to great applause: the stunning dancer Anita Berber and Celly de Rheydt and the beautiful Susu Wannowsky and her corona. Every Monday this ‘pyramid’ descended on Schwerinstraße at nine o’clock in the evening; it was typical Berlin nightlife with its sin and colorfulness.”

One of her friends was Marlene Diedrich, with whom she performed on stage, and there are rumors that the two had an affair. She was also friends with Kurt Tucholsky, who wrote songs for her under his pseudonym Theobald Tiger. Waldoff performed on all of Berlin’s major stages, such as the Scala and Wintergarten, and toured throughout Germany. She wrote about herself “I danced on the edge of the abyss, but nobody dared to push me into it”.

But then Waldoff’s career came to an end with the rise of Hitler. She was temporarily banned from performing in 1933 after appearing with the communist Rote Hilfe in Berlin’s Sportpalast. Submitting the “Aryan certificate” and joining the Reichs Chamber of Culture made performances possible again. However, the engagements largely failed to materialize, as her smoking and swearing appearance in men’s clothing with a tie and boyish cut did not correspond to the desired image of women and her open lesbianism was not compatible with the ideology of the National Socialists. From 1936, Goebbels banned her from performing at the Scala, the city’s largest variety theater.

Waldoff increasingly withdrew from the public eye and lived with Olga in Bayerisch-Gmain from the beginning of the war. She once again gave in to the Nazis and in 1942 took part in concerts for the Wehrmacht and performed in occupied Paris.

In 1953, she published her autobiography “Weeste noch…!”. She died of a stroke in 1957. Claire Waldoff and Olga von Roeder were buried in the von Roeder family grave at the Pragfriedhof cemetery in Stuttgart.

In Berlin, a bust by the artist Reinhard Jacob has commemorated Claire Waldoff at her former performance venue in front of the Friedrichstadt-Palast since 1987; Claire Waldoff Strasse has been located a few meters away since 2006. A memorial plaque was placed at her home in Regensburger Straße in 1989.